by Brad Ricca
“For handling the bail, I said.”
“Go back,” said Buns. “The umpire can’t make the rules!”
“But I shrugged it off,” said Cyril, with a grimace. “I went upstairs and took my pads off. Now back then, the dressing rooms were located in the back of the pavilion, so I never saw what occurred, but I believe the crowd invaded the ground, and there was a devil of a row. In about a quarter of an hour, W. L. Murdoch, the Sussex captain, came up to the dressing room and said to me, ‘Cyril, I want you to go in again.’”
Cyril Foley, forty-one, an Eton man, second lieutenant veteran of the Jameson Raid, and son of the late Honorable Sir St. George Gerald Foley, raised his cup to his lips. “Of course,” he said. “I was quite ready and managed to add some thirty-odd runs.” The men at the table clapped as he finished his glass.
“In fact, I believe I am the only person to have ever been accorded two innings without the sanction of the umpire.” The crowd laughed. “Oh yes, and I was wearing the opera gloves I wore the night before.” He shrugged. “I didn’t see a reason to change.” They roared again.
“I later asked Gutteridge why he had appealed. I had not handled the bail. I’m sorry to say he was suspended for two years. No one knows why he did it.”
As the table dispersed, Cyril Foley took their handshakes and admiration. He was a legend to these men: a soldier, cardplayer, shooter, bachelor, and most of all an accomplished batsman, having played in one hundred first-class matches in England and the West Indies. He was an adventurer-gentleman who was always good for a tremendous story. So when his good friend Robin Duff walked in, with his close-cut dark hair and mustache that defied gravity, Cyril knew that some game was up.
“Good to see you, Duff!” said Cyril, clasping his hand.
“Same. Do you have a moment? I have a fantastic proposition for you.”
By the time his friend had told him about Monty, Dr. Juvelius, the cipher, and the Ark of the Covenant, Cyril Foley had only one thing to say.
“Duff,” he said, shaking his head with a half grin, “should I call the police?”
Seven
Johan Millen
LONDON, JULY 1909
The doubt of the Bible must be doubted!” Johan Millen was standing in the middle of the dark room. He had come to share his knowledge of the Ark, which was significant, before the expedition left. He felt it was very important they know certain things.
“Externability and authority must disappear!” Millen was a magnetic speaker; his accent, flattened out with v’s and z’s, often changed in pitch midsentence, sometimes ending on a higher octave. It sounded more like a chant than actual speech. His words had an authority, like song.
“The Ark was made to God’s own specifications by Moses and two engineers in the desert after they left Egypt,” he said to his rapt audience. “It was constructed out of the sacred shittimwood, then gilded. The box measured two and a half cubits in length, one and a half in breadth, and one and a half in height. In it were placed the Ten Commandments of the law, in some form or another.
“After the people reached the promised land, the Ark was stolen by the enemy, the Philistines. But everywhere they tried to place it, sickness, in the form of tumor and woe, followed its every move. The Philistines were so distraught that they returned the Ark to an outlying village of the Israelites. King David, who was then early in his reign, was so pleased at the Ark’s return that he ordered it loaded onto a cart and driven to Jerusalem with a great escort of his people.
“As they passed over a farmer’s threshing floor, one of the oxen carrying the cart stumbled on some of the loose kernels. A man named Uzzah feared that the Ark might fall, so he bravely jumped forward and used his hand to hold it steady.”
Millen paused and looked down. He was saddened, but direct.
“Uzzah’s deed incurred the wrath of the Lord, who smote him where he stood. When David came upon the scene, he was filled with horror. Taken with an unnatural fear, he ordered the Ark to stay at the farm and for everyone to return to the city.
“Later, in consulting the Scripture, David found that he had not followed the rules of the law, that said the Ark should be transported with two long wooden poles and could not be touched. David tried again—following the rules this time—and they moved the Ark back to Jerusalem, with David dancing, with all his might, in the dust at the front of the procession.” Millen did a little dance here himself, to some laughter. He was a mercurial man, in both thought and deed. “They put the box in the tabernacle, where it was hidden by a veiled curtain.”
“The power of the Ark is real,” said Millen, pointing upward. But then he moved his finger to his temple. “But what was explained to superstition in the ancient past can now be explained by the scientist, not the fanatacist. Eventually, the ancient miracles, one after the other, dissolve into natural phenomena. In this case, Dr. Juvelius and I are in agreement that the dangerous power of the Ark was due to the substance we now know as radium. But!”—and here he raised his finger again—“We believe that the duration of its rest inside the box will have made it long inert.
“The Ark had peculiar effects on people,” said Millen, “but its purpose was clear. It was a means of communication with God.” Millen produced a small print of the Ark. He pointed to its golden lid, topped with two golden cherubim. “This is the mercy seat, the space for the presence of God,” he said. “When the high priest came before the Ark, we think, according to the texts, that it was not with a blank mind, but with a question!”
Millen got very quiet, there in the firelight. “But not with speech. One cannot simply talk to God. Urim and Thummim are the means by which we think the Ark was communicated with. They are the wise stones, as they were called by the medieval alchemists.”
His audience looked at him blankly, as if he were a ghost.
“Let me rephrase,” said Millen. “The priest could not confer directly with the Lord. He was too powerful. And sacrilege! That is where Urim and Thummim are used. In Exodus 28:30,” and here he took up his own black edition, “it says, ‘And thou shalt put Urim and Thummim into the court of the world, that they may lie upon Aaron’s heart when he enters the face of the Lord.’”
Millen rummaged through another book until he found a picture. It showed a golden rectangle covered with flat, colorful jewels. “Aaron, the high priest, wore a breastplate, called hoshen,” Millen said. “It was gold and covered with twelve gemstones, one for each tribe, lapis lazuli, amethyst, and moonstone among them. But it was not mere decoration or ceremony. This was part of divination.” And here Millen stretched out his arms and closed his hands. “In each palm, the priest held the rocks of Urim and Thummim. He would then ask a question, and the stones would reveal the will of God.
“Some believe the priest would know which hand to overturn, others believed it was a kind of psychic sense. Some complex questions could have been answered by great rays of light shining out of certain jewels on the breastplate; each jewel was taken to represent different letters, and the sequence of lighting thus would spell out an answer. Urim means ‘lights,’ after all. Or, and I believe this version, it was more simple.
“One meant cursed, the other faultless. The stones were essentially used to answer the oldest question of all: Innocent or guilty? True or false? Life or death?”
Eight
Cyril Foley
MEDITERRANEAN SEA, JULY 1909
Fine white sand stretched out under a sky the color of Wedgwood blue. Just beyond the shore, Cyril saw the slow, foaming waters of the ocean. The sea breeze sifted gently through the palm trees. The air was warm but not harsh; it was perfect. Cyril allowed himself a long, calming breath. Then, suddenly, his stomach rose, and a thick taste filled the back of his throat. He took another breath and held his hand out in front of him, against the blue sea, the sand, and the sky. He wavered for a moment, but then steadied. Cyril smiled again. He could feel it again, the magic of the place washing over him like a balm. The
n he began to shake a little, first his finger, then his hand. The horizon tipped over.
Cyril saw darkness. His thin blanket was pulled all the way up to his face, which was covered in seawater. His limbs awakened to a chilling cold. He looked up to see a gigantic mast and sail swaying in the night air above him. Cyril felt the hard deck beneath him and could hear the walls of waves splashing the boat, the wood creaking like bones. His stomach was in his mouth again. Cyril shut his eyes and tried to dream again of Jethou, one of the minor Channel Islands. He had made up his mind that he was going to buy it once they found the Ark.
A few days ago, they boarded the India at Victoria at half past eleven in the morning on Thursday, July 22, 1909. Their party was motley, consisting of Captain Monty Parker, Captain Robin Duff of the Guards, and Mr. Clarence Wilson. It had not taken much convincing for Cyril to join the group. They seemed like a good lot, and he trusted his man Duff completely. The war had sealed that.
Cyril also knew that he was one of the last to join. In fact, by the time he did, the Syndicate itself had changed. There was apparently a bit of bad blood between Vaughn and Monty Parker, the expedition leader. Vaughn had gone bankrupt because of some past deals and had been replaced (more or less) by Wilson, the long-haired aristocrat who was providing some of their expenses. He had been injured in the Boer War but seemed first-rate. Cyril, like Duff, was born into a noble family, but he was not a member of the Syndicate. He would be accorded his share of dividends once the Ark was found.
There were others. Otto Von Bourg was a clairvoyant. Some of the boys said that he had once, in London, used a crystal to solve the case of a missing gentleman. In a séance, Von Bourg communicated with the spirit of a man who had been murdered, then led police directly to his body. When he shook his hand, Cyril tried to clear his mind. Von Bourg was joined by a mysterious man named James Lee, another thought reader, who was said to be a friend of Juvelius.
They were also joined by Agop Macasdar, an Armenian who would serve as their much-needed interpreter. Monty had found him in Constantinople. After their trip to Jerusalem, Monty had gone there—several times, in fact—to negotiate the precious digging rights from the Turks. This had been a long and delicate negotiation given the unsettled politics of the area. The year before, the progressive Young Turks masterminded a march on Constantinople that persuaded Sultan Abdülhamīd II to return to a constitutional form of government. Though the Young Turks were, at times, amenable to the expedition, numerous changes in their leadership posts made a signed agreement difficult. It was only when an accountant named Mehmet Cavid Bey was named finance minister and intervened on Monty’s behalf that the accord was sealed. Cyril heard from the others that Monty had secured the digging rights for five hundred pounds sterling for three years. Two Turkish officials would join them in Jerusalem as observers. Cyril wondered what the split would be.
From England, they traveled in a steady, speedy line to Marseilles, where they stopped, changed course east, then headed straight to Port Said in northern Egypt. When they landed on July 27, two men waited for them on the dock. One of them was Mr. Walsh, one of the head engineers of the new pier at Dover and the London Underground. “Invaluable,” thought Cyril, as he clasped Walsh’s rough hand.
The second man was thin and wore a high collar, a vest, and trim boots. Cyril almost laughed; he knew exactly who this had to be.
“The great Juvelius,” Cyril said sardonically. The man looked up and nodded; clearly his English was sparse, but he knew his name. Everyone disembarked from the India as hired men moved their luggage. Juvelius clutched his bag close. They were going to transfer to a small boat that Clarence Wilson had docked at Port Said, before heading on to Jaffa.
When they approached Wilson’s vessel, the Water Lily, Cyril expected to see a fine and practical English supply boat. Instead, he saw a bright white racing yacht in impeccable condition. The boat was not very long (though certainly more than enough for their needs), but it had a bangingly tall mast. It pushed up into the sky like some great biblical tower. Cyril elbowed Wilson in jest, though he had to admit he was jealous. Within a day, they set sail for Jaffa.
Now, in the grip of a midnight storm, their smooth sailing trip seemed like a suicide mission.
“That ridiculous mast,” muttered Cyril as he again looked up at it, swaying like it was drunken. Cyril tumbled to his feet, hunched over, and wrapped the blanket around him. All around him, his companions were lying on the deck in similar straits. They had decided to lie on deck so they wouldn’t roll overboard, though that no longer felt like such a wise decision. It had now become some sort of lunatic contest as to who could last the longest before getting sick. Cyril laughed. The mind men had already gone belowdecks. Cyril shambled to his feet in his blanket and moved forward like some old Egyptian mummy. He looked over to Walsh, the engineer, and nodded. The spray from the waves blasted off the sides of the boat.
“Look out!” someone yelled.
A swell of cold Mediterranean water surged against the boat, causing it to dangerously tip. Cyril looked at the safety angle: they were several degrees over the limit. He held his breath.
The boat hung there a slow, captivating moment, tipped halfway over, then fell back onto its hull with a punch and splash that made everyone stumble. Cyril looked behind him, hoping that each new rhythm of the swell wouldn’t bring an even bigger wave that was lying in wait for them, hoping to spill them out of the boat like so many little fish.
He saw Monty standing up against the waves, a shadow in his hat in the dark of the storm. Cyril wondered what his share in this was. He didn’t know much about him. He knew he was in line to be Lord Morley, though it was unlikely because he was the second son. Cyril knew that Monty had been in the Second Boer War, after he and Duff. Cyril heard that Monty had been injured there, though he saw no visible limp or scar.
The storm never really ended that night, though after it reached its peak, it began to settle down. Their little competition a soggy disaster, Monty retired belowdecks around one in the morning, his easy demeanor showing that he had no need to prove anything. Robin Duff, who had never been seasick in his life, gave in at three A.M. Cyril, who had never withdrawn from a race or match, managed to stick it out, but only just. Lee and Von Bourg had spent the night below. Everyone heard their unfortunate retching.
When Cyril woke up, it was still dark, but it had stopped raining and there was enough early-morning light that he could finally see beyond the yacht. This time, it was Juvelius who was perched at the stern, looking forward. Cyril followed his gaze. As the sun started to push up, the dim outline of an ancient city rose on the horizon. In the haze, it looked like some magnificent version of a child’s blocks, all piled up on top of itself. This is how the Water Lily, bruised and slow, reached the port city of Jaffa.
By the time the morning sun was comfortable, most everyone had risen, or at least most of them.
“How is Von Bourg?” asked one of the boys.
“He passed away just before sunup,” answered the steward, without flinching.
There was a pause, then the men laughed.
Though they could see the city, they could not yet land until they were cleared to do so. They cast the small anchor over the Water Lily’s edge. It clinked, then splashed, then sank. As they floated in the open, Cyril got a better look at Jaffa. The city itself was long and stood on the edge of a ridge, old and crumbling. The city was said to have been named after Japheth, the son of Noah, who built it after the Flood. Cyril expected a short trip in Palestine; they would have the Ark in tow and the wind at their backs in a couple of days at most. But he found the sight of Jaffa, romantic and deep, to be exotic.
At nine o’clock in the morning, a small boat came up to them, carrying a pilot and passenger. The latter was the port medical officer, a dry, serious man. He wore a light uniform and had an air of control to him.
“You cannot land,” he said, matter-of-factly, “until I have vetted the lot of you.”
Jaffa apparently still had problems with the plague.
“Fantastic,” said Cyril, probably too loudly.
The Water Lily was a small enough vessel, so it couldn’t take too long, Cyril thought. Besides, the medical officer looked a little seasick himself.
Monty stuck his tongue out first, with the barest minimum of enthusiasm, and let the medic look into his eyes. Cyril was next, and then down the row. The medic got through the rest of them rather quickly, including Juvelius.
“Is that all of you?” asked the medic.
It was just then that a very bleary Lee and Von Bourg, both looking a quite gruesome shade of gray, climbed up the stairs to make their grand entrance. Cyril thought of making a statement about the miraculous resurrection of Mr. Von Bourg but thought better of it. The medic took one look at the two and shook his head. Cyril’s spirits sank. They might be stuck out here for days, even weeks. Cyril thought of his island with the light breeze. He looked over to Jaffa.
He had an idea.
Cyril looked closely as the medic waited to examine the two psychics. The man wearily sat down on the edge of the rail and wiped his brow. He was sick, observed Cyril. Maybe the Water Lily’s propensity to make people ill because of its small dimensions could be used in their favor. He grabbed Macasdar, and they slipped over to the launch that the medic had tied to the side of the boat. The pilot looked up at them. Cyril smiled a hello.
“Tell him,” he told Macasdar, “that his master wants him to return to harbor and remain there till signaled for from the yacht.” Macasdar looked at Cyril.
“Trust me,” said Cyril. “But don’t tell him that.” Macasdar relayed his words. The pilot looked over at the sick medic, nodded, and pushed the boat off.